


Bloodstream

by verovex



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: ...there's so much rambling, Angst, Character Study, Description of Violence in Nightmares, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Sharing a Bed, emotionally stunted idiots, the 10 year skip still happened and the author is still bitter about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 17:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20411335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verovex/pseuds/verovex
Summary: Ed discovers the chip has fundamentally changed his ability to keep emotions in check, and after being reunited with Oswald after ten years, everything is brought to the forefront.





	Bloodstream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [horrorriz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrorriz/gifts).

> Apparently, I don’t know how to write a fic that hasn’t been prompted by Riz, or that’s ultimately meant to be gifted to him, but poor fucker has to deal with it anyway (+ it's a special day).
> 
> Fic titled after [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sPPyzT1CMM).

* * *

The manor had been the only thing that stood up against the test of time. But, this was relative to one’s expectations given a lack of upkeep due to insufficient funds. They expect overgrown grass, vines and general unkempt greenery, but are surprised to find the grounds are immaculate.

“Your doing?” Oswald glances to Ed as they cross the expanse to the front steps.

Ed shrugs, “Ivy had a stint in Arkham for a couple of years in a neighbouring cell. After some initial… one-sided disdain and distrust… we found we shared some common interests.”

“She still hates me though.”

“She mentioned there would always be a kinship between freaks,” Ed says with a small smile. “I still remember when she broke out with Clayface and Ecco’s help, still a top three highlight.”

“I imagine she won’t be fond of Barbara or Jeremiah, given their involvement with Ecco’s death.” Oswald brings the key to the lock of the manor, inhaling deeply. It should feel like coming home, but it doesn’t. Not truly. There’s something tainted about the manor, its’ happiness and light robbed long ago.

Although the grounds have been well-maintained, the interior of the home was not. There is a thick layer of dust over every surface. Oswald starts with an apology, but it gets lost in his own sneeze.

“It’s okay,” Ed says. “Just needs a little work.”

“It’ll take an army and money neither of us has."

“We’ll make do.”

Oswald quirks a brow, but shouldn’t be that put-off at the prospect Ed’s already planned ahead. He likely hadn’t considered needing to conjure funds for professional-level cleaning of a seven-bedroom household, but he knows it will bring a smile to Oswald’s face.

It’s fairly late in the day, so any heist-like shenanigans would need to wait, but they do find sealed bedding hidden away in the basement, and although it smells stale, it would do. The trouble was it was only one set. They both decided on changing the master bedroom’s sheets, and look across at one another once the bed is made.

“I’ll go clean off the couch downstairs—” Ed starts.

“Nonsense, I should—”

“This is your home, you should be able to—”

“You are not just a guest here, it’s your home as well. Please—”

“Together then?” Ed deadpans.

Oswald shuffles slippered feet on the hardwood floor, “together then.”

They slip under the sheets in nervous unison, both hogging their respective edges and keeping a fair amount of distance between them. Oswald feels rigid and frozen in place, thinking he’d never be able to fall asleep this close to Ed, but considering how taxing the entire day had been, falls asleep within minutes.

Ed doesn’t sleep. 

The mattress is too comfortable, the sheets are heavy, the air is musty, but still far superior to Arkham, given the lack of adequate ventilation and mould-covered walls. He thinks about his frequent nightmares during his stay, and worries he’ll wake Oswald with them. He doesn’t want to move too much to try to find a better position to lay in either, as he worries that will wake Oswald too. So, he resolves to stare at the opposite wall, finds a spot where the faint light from outside creeps through a hole in the curtains. There’s a part of him that doesn’t think he deserves this luxury, maybe he’s spent too long in Arkham being told he’s a miserable excuse for a human being. He had been meant to serve a lifetime after all, not just a decade.

After the chip had been removed, he’d tried to repress the emotions it had allowed to bleed through him. He’d spent a lifetime perfecting that skill, but the filter had been altered. It impeding on his every thought, dug into nerves he didn’t realize he had, felt as if there was something invisible crushing his chest. He suddenly found he worried endlessly over things like Oswald being gone too long while they were meant to work on their escape via submarine. It had produced fear, jealousy, and severe bouts of abandonment anxiety. As had the thought of Oswald leaving to fight for a city that never loved him back had forced him to re-evaluate his own inexplicable feelings and chased after him under the false premise of needing two to man a vessel. He ended up being the one to follow his own heart then.

Time away had made repairs, or had left further damage, depending on the angle you looked at it. Ed wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the status of his brain before being hauled off to Arkham, and his time there hadn’t helped either. 

In the short time prior to babies being born and after wars were won, Ed had started having more thoughts. They weren’t helpful thoughts, they were confusing. Thoughts he didn’t know what to do with himself about, or what to make of them, because they were saying he was missing a part of himself the longer he tried to keep them at bay. It hadn’t ended up mattering that he and Oswald had made amends, it wasn’t enough. His brain wasn’t satiated, it wanted more. It wanted to hold Oswald in a way he didn’t understand. Wanted him to be there in ways he scolded himself for, because he’d lost his chance, hadn’t he? He didn’t get to think any of this would go back to the way it was. Oswald didn’t love him anymore.

Their reconciliation, truce as it was known, had resolved the things he might have once kept at bay. But now that most of his anger and desire for revenge had long since dissipated, it left confusion in its wake, heightened by the chip’s lasting effects. A confusion that had existed much longer than he wanted to openly admit. Sometime around when a file folder with Oswald’s picture had popped up on his desk during an era he’d rather forget.

It shouldn’t feel like this, any of it. He’d long suppressed the acknowledgement that Oswald was anything more than a _ friend _ because it was a fact he’d rather not come to terms with. But the chip, this wretched chip, had put emotions on display in his mind, and he couldn’t turn them off. He desperately wanted them to disappear, everything was easier when you weren’t in love with your companion of a best friend. Your “brother”, as Oswald had referred to a bond that Ed knew was far from familial.

He’d wondered what had been the turning point for Oswald, what had shifted his disregard for their partnership. Was it the whole betrayal for a woman thing, the dug up your father’s remains thing, or just a culmination of all the betrayals, lies, and dramatics Ed had thought was most appropriate in the moment?

But, some things had pointed to the contrary. Oswald doing what he could to save him, being one. He should've died. It was a sour realization, even more so now that his emotions were heightened and he seemed to cling to memories for the duration of his incarceration. Recollections from all the times Ed had done something to protect Oswald, and Oswald had returned the favour, looking for whatever crumbs he could hang onto. 

There'd been something so debilitating but freeing from feeling nothing at all. Now there was an open door that had always been padlocked and Ed hasn’t been sure of anything in a decade.

All he'd ever wanted was to feel, to be allowed to feel, to know what something other than emptiness felt like. Now he had Oswald again, after a wait that he would compare to torture, it felt like adrenaline rushing through him, but some layer of exhaustion was capsizing around him. He wanted to hold the universe in his hands and tell Oswald he only saw stars when he looked at him.

By the time Ed realizes how long he’s been dwelling on any of this, sunlight is peering in and Oswald is stirring next to him.

_ I cannot be bought, but I can be stolen with one glance. I'm worthless to one but priceless to two _—

_ Love._ The thing about love is you're never quite sure what to do with it. You feel it, it's pervasive with a side of persuasive, it takes over when you don't want it to, and it holds you when you need it to.

Why would Ed ever be privileged enough to have it returned? It’s been too long.

Oswald had put up fortifications Ed couldn’t pierce. No doubt due to everything from before and deciding hope wasn’t worth having. Entirely unencumbered, as someone had once suggested. Ed realizes it’s not just his fault Oswald had turned to this type of exterior, but he’s a massive part of it. He’s not sure how to navigate this, if only his feelings and emotions could be switched off again, perhaps they wouldn’t even need to find a path. Just be a presence to one another, and that’s it.

However, the chances of Ed turning off a fire on parched land would prove to be as difficult as it sounded.

Life in Arkham had given him a perspective on time he didn’t expect. Mostly because he didn’t have a choice on how long he dwelled on anything.

Some days were okay because entertainment was supplied through the poking and prodding of comatose patients without a say, or resolving disputes between others by manipulating outcomes, but most days Ed wished he’d been the one that was comatose.

Now that he had a third chance at life, he wanted Oswald and no one else.

**

Early on in the morning, Ed tracks down Selina in the Narrows, on the intel provided by Ivy she was likely giving back to the kids on the street. Ed raises his hands as he approaches her, her catlike reflexes on the whip at her belt before she’s even turned to look at him.

“What do you want, Nygma? Another head injury?” Selina asks, one hand still on her hip as she passes a loaf of bread to a child that couldn’t have been older than ten.

“A job,” Ed replies.

“I don’t do that anymore,” Selina twists around, a smirk at her lips.

“My source says otherwise.”

“Yeah, well, Ivy’s never been very good at keeping her damn mouth shut,” Selina says with no hint of malice. “I do need help with a specific hit that would benefit from your skillset. But, this doesn’t make us allies.”

“Of course, Miss Kyle.”

Selina waves a hand dismissively, “it’s Catwoman now.”

**

Whatever Selina— Catwoman has been up to in the last decade, was phenomenal. Despite still having her main headquarters in the Narrows, it’s outfitted with a top-notch security system, as well as a family of well-loved cats.

There’s a separate hall for homeless children as well, who are taken care of by a team of young adults who also grew up in the Narrows.

“I don’t get far from my roots, and I never intend to,” Selina says. 

They enter through a doorway to another area of the apartment complex, she hits a button on a nearby remote and the door locks, and a new room opens that had been hidden in the far wall. 

Ed suddenly feels inferior in this light. He’s missed out on all this progress _ he _ could’ve made. Perhaps he and Catwoman could’ve been actual allies if James Gordon hadn’t stripped it all from him. A pardon that ended up being entirely forgotten once Jim’s reign over Gotham was made clear after reconstruction efforts. He’d never liked Ed or Oswald, let alone would let them thrive together while incarcerated. God forbid anyone else should’ve gone away that had ever been a criminal too. No, just them. Ed can feel the rage bubble from his deeply stunted evolution. He was nothing more than what he went away as — a fad that never quite took off. A couple-hits-wonder.

His reoccurring dream of killing Gordon quickly manifests in his mind, usually a thought he had when the nights at Arkham felt particularly bleak and he didn’t have it in him to think about happier daydreams, like holding Oswald’s hand, or feeling the sun on his skin.

Gordon deserved more than a bullet to the head and a swim in the pier. Ed had already dabbled in electrocution and crushed chests when it came to Jim, but he’d decided some time ago Jim could do without some limbs, and when Ed wouldn’t allow him to die, he’d continue to chip away until there was nothing left and bury him alive. Some days Jim’s end was the only motivation he had to get out of bed.

“Earth to Chess Killer?” Selina snaps her fingers in front of his face. Ed blinks several times and then nods, she points to the blueprints laying on the table. “You sure you’re good for this? Maybe you need to take a week to acclimatize back to Gotham living, huh?”

“I need to hire a cleaner for the manor and have enough to stock the fridge with food.”

“Yeah, the money we could make from this would have you a cleaner for life, and enough to feed the two of you for the rest of your lives.”

Ed hadn’t specified he was trying to provide for two, but he can only assume Ivy had shared the information. He wonders for a moment what Oswald is up to, if he’s getting reacquainted with old… friends (a generous term). There’s a brief flicker that he misses him, even if it’s hardly been any time at all. Maybe he isn’t in the right frame of mind for any of this.

“Listen,” Selina starts slowly. “How about we go over the plan, but we don’t put it in action until early next week? I’ll give you an advance on the earnings, and send some of the older kids over to clean up the place. On me.”

Ed wants to ask why, but there’s something about this new Selina that says you shouldn’t question her motives. There’s far more maturity in her than a mid-20s woman should have.

“That is incredibly generous, Catwoman. Thank you.” Ed replies, giving her a faint smile. Selina reciprocates with a small glint of her own.

The plan is absolutely superior to anything Ed would have guessed she wanted to do. Colour him incredibly impressed, even if the inferiority complex was starting to ripple rather aggressively through him.

They set a date that would fit both their schedules, Ed’s far more open than hers. She calls for a massive van to take Ed back to the manor with a group of cleaners, and enough Chinese food to feed them all, as well as cover off Ed and Oswald for days.

As Ed and Oswald sit in the freshly cleaned dining room, Ed can’t help but stare into the void of his still full take-out box. 

Oswald puts down his chopsticks, giving him a worried glance. “I haven't seen you eat once, Ed. You’re going to wither away before we can claw back any old territories. You should eat.”

Ed’s not sure where his lack of appetite stems from. Ten years of grub and slosh that had only given him the necessary proteins and enough vitamins to stay alive had ruined his palette. It came from a barrel, if they could strap down all the patients and feed them through tubes, they probably would’ve done that instead of having servers. Ed pushes the box away as his stomach fails him and growls, but he still doesn’t have it in him to eat.

This world isn’t the one he remembers. So many people do not remember him, or barely do. It makes him unsettled, as if he’d never had an impact, and even if he wanted one now, there was too much work to do to reclaim his position. He also didn’t want to be someone else’s side piece again. He was not a Chief of Staff, he was not a strategist for the Queen of the Narrows. He was his own person, and seeing as how Arkham had taken away his life, he would not be given an out and then not take full advantage of it. Did that mean he shouldn’t stick by Oswald’s side? Would he always be unimportant if he stayed there?

He figures Oswald must be speaking to him, but he can’t hear it. He pushes away from the table without any adieu, and hurries up the stairs to his old bedroom as his heart lurches uncomfortably in his chest. Oswald watches after him, mouth agape.

The cleaning crew had finished their work upstairs a little bit ago, and now were working on the remainder of the first floor. 

Ed plops down face-first into the sheets, considering sleep. He’s not sure he wants to, Oswald’s presence had been grounding the night before, even if he hadn’t slept at all, it still helped keep thoughts at bay. 

Ed turns his head so he can watch the sunset instead, and the thoughts come anyway. There’s a strong chance he can’t stay, he has ample evidence to back it up. Oswald couldn’t possibly feel the same way he did over a decade prior, and their alliance with one another was rocky at best. Anytime Oswald had smiled in his direction, there was a hint of sadness to it. Or, maybe it was pity. He feels like a burden to Oswald, has felt that way in some shape or form for a long time.

He thinks about all the times he sat up late at night in his cell, listening to the rambles and screams of other inmates. Sometimes they were his own. Sometimes he woke from dreams that felt as far away as they were, usually involving just how much he missed Oswald. It would wrack through him, rediscovering the world he lived in was not one with Oswald at his side at all. It would usually end with Ed sobbing, feeling like he’d never be allowed out. He’d never see Oswald again, or one of them might die before they even had the chance.

His time in Arkham had felt so empty. An emptiness Ed was innately familiar with, but now that his emotions didn’t seem as inhibited, it was dreadful in a way that wasn’t manageable. He considered writing letters, but he was sure they’d never leave the property, and he was far too scared of rejection from Oswald.

This fear, as irrational as it may be, was only intensified now that he was out and by Oswald’s side, worries had resurfaced, a long list that started somewhere around fear of rejection, and ended with fearing he couldn’t be his own person if he stayed with him

Ed reminds himself that most of what prevented him from hanging himself in his cell throughout his Arkham stay had been the positive thoughts and dreams of Oswald, living together again, sharing meals, and going to events with one another. The thoughts that brought the most joy were the ones of crime and torture too, even if Ed could still get away with some form of them in Arkham, it wasn’t the same without a partner. Ed thinks about the first — Leonard, chuckling softly into the silence of the massive room, smiling against his wet pillow. 

He eventually makes it under the sheets, only because he needs something to wrap around himself, but he still doesn’t dare sleep. None of this is comfortable. He considers going back to Oswald’s bedroom, wonders if he’d even be let inside, or if Oswald would think him strange. The sheets provide a heaviness Ed needs, something that can compensate for the lack of touch in his life, and it’s the only place he can get this warmth from. He’d dreamed about that too, the last time he’d hugged Oswald had been during their stint of freedom after the army had backed off, and before Jim had caught up with them.

Ed doesn’t remember why it happened, just that it had, and he’s been clinging onto the memory all this time, hoping to replace it soon. He’d found it difficult to restrain himself from small notions, outstretched arms, leading Oswald away, hands on his shoulder, at his lower back. Sometimes so fleeting he supposes Oswald doesn’t even notice, but they’re significant to Ed. 

He’s not sure how to ask for it. He doesn’t think he can say, _ ‘I’ve been thinking about this for ten years and I hope you’ll reciprocate my touch’ _, but he doesn’t have any other way of phrasing it. He doesn’t want to leave any of this in a “friendship” kind of manner, he wants Oswald to understand what he means. But, Ed’s not sure he can handle the inevitable rejection.

The potential reply of, _ ‘we’re better off as friends, remember? Brothers? We shouldn’t ruin this. We’ve been down this path before.’ _

There’s also the fact that it's not an act Ed thinks he deserves. He’s not sure he’s ever been allowed to ask for affection, and everything with Oswald had felt very different from the get-go than it ever had with Kristen, Isabella, or Lee. 

Ed would prefer to scream until his throat is raw. He’s tempted to walk back to Arkham and sign away his life again. This life didn’t want him, he was stuck in a past state that didn’t exist any longer. He didn’t know this world, or who he was.

He ends up on the floor when the mattress proves to be too much, when his brain reminds him that the cot he’d slept on for so long had been the only thing he deserved to get comfort from, the floor was the next best option.

It’s how Oswald finds him, after his concern had festered into the complete terror that Ed would disappear in the middle of the night. He knocks first, but after getting no reply he opens the door to an empty bed, and his heart drops. He should’ve come in earlier. He makes to leave when he hears something from the other side of the bed, and his features soften at Ed on the floor, still clothed and only with a thin sheet around him, sleeping soundly, albeit various twitches and mumbles.

He considers shaking him awake and having him move to the bed, but he thinks about how uncomfortable sleeping in Blackgate had been, and that was likely where Ed’s headspace had been. When Oswald had landed in a bed again, it had been an absolutely magnificent experience, he’d missed that comfort. But Blackgate didn’t have as thin of mattresses as Arkham, nor was it as cold.

That sinking feeling in his chest is back, but with sympathy for all Ed endured. The bed here had likely been _ too _ soft. That vile hold had likely left scars Oswald couldn’t see, and Ed had never been much of an open book to begin with.

Oswald creeps out of the bedroom, coming back with his own duvet to lay over Ed, careful as he wrapped it around Ed’s frame. He could’ve used the one from Ed’s bed, but he wondered if this would have a different effect.

**

When Ed wakes in the middle of the night, he finds Oswald in his unused bed, curled up in Ed’s remaining blankets. Ed inhales deeply, wrapping the duvet around himself tighter.

Yes, it had quelled his more disparaging thoughts.

**

They don’t talk about it the next morning, or the next, but the pattern continues. Ed sleeping on the floor. There’s a fair bit of back and forth on the third night, as Ed continues to reject sleeping in the bed, but Oswald gets him to at least use a pillow, and allows Oswald to continue tucking him in the best he can. Oswald continues to sleep in the bed next to Ed as a sign of being closeby.

Ed eats periodically, and still in a way that makes Oswald worry, but knows it’s likely a part of the transition back into this world too, and doesn’t want to pressure Ed. He considers it a victory he’s eating at all.

They find it’s hard to talk about anything, Ed’s not sure where to start with his time away, and Oswald isn’t quite sure either. They feel like the experiences are better left unknown, even if they’d both come out different men, the way they regarded one another hadn’t changed. At least, so Oswald thought.

He’d noticed there’d been something different about Ed around the time he’d shot Penn. Something about the way he was more explosive with his emotions, rather than hiding them. Oswald wanted to take it as a compliment, that Ed was more comfortable being open with him, rather than hiding behind a facade. But the more time passed, it was evident this was damage from the chip itself. Oswald wasn’t sure how to approach it and he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to do so before being locked away.

He’d spent most of his time worrying for Ed, wanting to connect with him in some way, but worried about the communications being disrupted, or never returned at all.

Now that he had Ed back in his life, he never wanted him to leave, but Ed’s general demeanour since returning to the manor was causing Oswald to take several steps back. Oswald’s not sure how to approach any of this. His feelings had far from dissipated when it came to Ed, even if he’d attempted to keep them quiet, making passing comments that were far from the truth.

He wanted them on a different path of reconciliation, but the trek to get there was paved with hills he wasn’t sure he could climb.

**

The sixth night of their sleeping arrangement, and the night before Ed is supposed to meet with Selina to put their plan into action, Oswald’s ripped from his slumber by sobs and screams coming from beside the bed.

Oswald’s at Ed’s side in an instant, his leg screaming at him for hitting the floor so hard, but nothing he does seems to yank Ed out of his reverie. He thrashes around, even as Oswald tries to pull Ed into his lap, he settles on trying to run his hands through Ed’s sweat-soaked hair, waiting for the terror to work itself out of Ed’s system, but the screams and yells about how dark and cold Ed’s world is, makes Oswald nauseated. He tries shaking Ed’s shoulders, leaning down near his ear to speak to him, trying to coax his consciousness. Nothing helps. 

Oswald leaves his side to search a freshly stocked bathroom cabinet, stopping at the prescription pills he’d lifted from a pharmacy nearby. Lifted being a variant of ‘held a pharmacist at gunpoint’. Oswald situates himself against Ed again, feeding him the pill to help him settle down. 

As his physical state changes, Ed wakes up confused and disoriented, glancing up at Oswald in a daze.

His nightmare had him alone, so very alone. 

He’d been doomed to die lonely, and anyone who got close was meant to die around him. Oswald had been tortured and murdered in front of him, some plan gone awry that had resulted in the wrong group wanting blood. Ed was forced to watch it all, bound and gagged without being able to even cradle Oswald as the life left him, and his name was uttered with his last breaths. After that, he’d found life in pills again, until he’d ended up on the streets with no one remembering his name. He was forgotten. No one was coming to help, no one would ever care for him the way Oswald had. Then he’d been tossed in Arkham again for nothing at all, left in a cell with no light. Alone. Always alone.

Oswald’s not sure if Ed realizes he’s divulging all of this out loud, but he lets him continue nonetheless. 

“—I was just left to rot and I deserved it.” Ed finishes. At some point, he’d accepted Oswald’s outstretched arms, and Oswald pulling him flush against him. Ed’s head rested against his chest as Ed dry sobbed through his explanation.

“How could you possibly think you deserved any of that?” Oswald asks quietly.

“I killed all those people, Oswald. It doesn’t matter if it was a chip in my head, it was my fault.”

“Firstly, where the fault lays is in that chip. You served your time. And there’s a strong chance more innocent people will die in the future too, but I believe that comes with our line of business.”

Ed considers it. In truth, he hadn’t thought about the events of Haven in a long time. He understood that it hadn’t been his doing, he’d had enough time to mull over it. But, he couldn’t admit to how fearful he was of being alone. How all he wanted was Oswald for a lifetime, but it was too much to express, and he didn’t know what the outcome was going to be in saying that at all.

“You know, Ed,” Oswald pauses, his hands around Ed’s shoulders growing rigid, aura leaking uncertainty. “Perhaps not.”

Ed twists around enough to be able to look up at him, “now you have to tell me.”

Oswald leans back at the proximity, “I’m not sure it’s the right time.”

“Well, if Gordon has his way I may be incarcerated again in no time.”

Oswald takes a deep breath, pushing away from Ed to stand, as it seems safer to do so. He crawls back into the bed, holding up the duvet as an invitation for Ed to join him.

“I don’t want to have to beg, but I believe this would be better for both of us,” Oswald intices.

Ed gives in without much hassle, still keeping a fair amount of distance between the two of them as he nestles in the sheets, but facing one another this time.

Oswald puts his hand out to rest midway between them. “If you’re worried about what your brain will conjure up next, you can hold my hand for support.”

“I’m not a child, Oswald,” Ed says, hushed, but reaches for it anyway, allowing Oswald to do the holding.

“I would never imply you were.”

There’s an intimacy there with something so small they’d both missed, desperately, and they hadn’t realized how much it would alleviate the anxiety between them. Ed’s erratic heartbeat after the nightmare had calmed, Oswald’s brain firing at nine million thoughts a minute had gone silent. 

“Do you still want to know what I wanted to say?” Oswald’s fingers twitch against Ed’s. He had missed out on a chance to express himself before, when he’d planned a love confession during a dinner that hadn’t happened when it was supposed to. He’d been late then, he supposed he needed to put an end to the chance of being late again. Ed nods, patient. The light from the bedside table blanketed itself over Ed in such a way it made Oswald’s heart swell. He can’t remember the last time he’d been so close to admire Ed’s features like this. 

Oswald closes his eyes, suddenly worried he’d never get any of this out, “in my time at Blackgate, a day didn’t pass I didn’t think of you and wishing we’d left Gotham when we had the chance to start our lives elsewhere. It feels like we lost ten years we’ll never get back. Time we could’ve had to work through past transgressions or faults. I’ve felt so dreadfully alone. In ten years, the first time I didn’t feel a semblance of loneliness was with my proximity to you now. I’ve missed you so much.”

Ed swallows, closing his eyes too. He squeezes at Oswald’s hand, “I missed you more than I ever thought I could. The only hope I had was that you’d help me escape, even if it hadn’t ended up being you at all.”

“It was in the works before Jeremiah had ever gotten his hands on you, that damned clown.”

Ed chuckles, nuzzling against the pillow, breathing eventually evened out as he was lulled to sleep, hand going lax in Oswald’s grip. Oswald stays up a little while longer, just in case, until he succumbs to his own need for sleep.

When he wakes up in the morning, Ed is nowhere to be found, and even if it does make Oswald’s chest tight, he was already told this would be the case as Selina needed him in the downtown core fairly early in the day to put their plan into motion. Something about needing to get there around the same time the security guards change shifts, to knockout one guard who happened to look a whole lot like Ed. After which, Selina would meet him in one of the rooms housing the target. All Ed had to do was cover the camera feed with a loop and the rest was like clockwork. 

It went seamlessly.

Ed was positively enthralled, tossing the guard’s clothes and belongings into a nearby garbage bin. Once he linked back up with Selina in the Narrows, she said she’d wire the funds to an off-shore account, and Ed gave her a look somewhere between confused and suspicious. She rolled her eyes, then explained she had one set up in Ed’s name as the cycle of ‘investments’ in Gotham had drastically shifted since he’d been put away, and Barbara had created a system for money laundering that no one would be any the wiser to, all under the guise of turning a new leaf.

Delighted was an understatement, when he ends up back at the manor with Oswald, saddling up knee to knee with him on the couch, he recounts the day. Oswald listens intently, seeing Ed genuinely smile in a way he hadn’t seen since he picked Ed up in the limousine. Ed’s found a piece that was missing that hadn’t been settled in the decade ripped away from him, keeping him from an identity that was dead and buried in Arkham’s walls.

It would take a couple more tries to get back into the groove of things, ‘acclimatize’ as Selina had said, but it seems far more possible now. He’s speaking far too quickly, but he doesn’t have reign over it, and Oswald doesn’t mind. Ed doesn’t want the feeling to pass, even if it undoubtedly will. He feels far from inferior in this state. His thoughts dive into a different territory, resting his temple against the back of the couch as he gazes at Oswald.

“I want to do all of this together, in some fashion,” Ed says. Oswald hasn’t turned to look at him, choosing to look at his hands. “I want to have a seat at the table, not just a strategic piece in the background.”

“You’ve never been in the background, Ed. I’ve always seen you as an equal.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I can promise you I won’t repeat the same mistakes.”

“Neither will I,” Ed says, lifting a hand to rest a finger on Oswald’s chin, turning it towards him. Oswald’s glance flickers from Ed’s lips to his eyes, breathing deeply. “I care for you far too much to let any of this get away from me again.”

“We missed ten years,” Oswald says, softly, slowly.

“We have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”

**

They sleep in the same bed again that night, this time in the master bedroom. Ed’s nightmares don’t make an appearance, and the hand holding continues.

The next morning Ed wakes to the smell of fresh pancakes and an assortment of breakfast delights, and Oswald finds far too much amusement in the way he shovels down the food as if it’ll be his last meal.

“There’s plenty more food if you don’t choke on what you’re inhaling right now,” Oswald says with a laugh.

Ed meets his stare with a mouth full of food, swallows, and then pats the edges of his lips with a nearby napkin, “thank you, Oswald.”

“For?”

“Everything. Always.”


End file.
